Anytime my mom tells me about one of her ailments, and I ask her to go to the doctor, she usually tells me “அந்த காலத்துல நம்ம முன்னோர்கள் எல்லாம் டாக்டர்கிட்ட போகாம, மருந்து சாப்பிடம்தான் அவ்வளவு நாள் வாழ்தங்க.” It roughly translates to ‘Our ancestors managed to live long lives without needing to go to the doctor or take medicine.’ Trying to reason my mom’s line of reasoning about this particular conversation and other past conversations, I noticed some parallels: most times, we don’t stop to ask, ‘Why do we do things the way we do them.’

I engaged my mom further by asking, ‘Do you think our ancestors managed to live long without taking medicine or visiting doctors often because they knew and lived better or because they did not have the means, medical advancements, or access to doctors or medicine?’ It made us both think a bit. Not only did my question make us think about the why, it also made us explore a different side of her original statement. We mostly knew of those who survived the deadly diseases and lived to tell their stories but left masses that unfortunately did not survive long enough to pass on what they went through.

The above was an example of conventional wisdom. But similar scenarios do play out when we do certain things long enough without looking elsewhere and when we get into a comfort zone. I was talking to one of my friends, whom I will call John, about my family’s largely cash-based business (a very common practice in India) and how my folks are generally apprehensive about switching to a cash-free practice. John, too shared about his family business practices, such as going to the bank and waiting in line to talk to interact with the clerk to deposit money. He said the whole affair takes his family about three hours to do in person, whereas it could’ve been done in just five minutes via Internet banking. When John’s grandfather started his family’s business, going to the bank to conduct business might have been the only way to get things done. But did he get used to the notion that the only way to get any business done with the bank is by going to the bank in person? Did he grow comfortable going to the bank even though going to the bank in person took more time and kept him from doing other things he could have spent his time doing? Do we all get used to or do not question, “Why do we do things the way we do?”

I believe a significant professional, personal, and societal cost is associated if we don’t ask the above question. Let me conclude by discussing a topic extremely close to my heart, arranged marriages. Before I go any further, I want to say that I can only speak for my experiences and my opinions. There will be people who disagree with me. So, back to the discussion, arranged marriages. I was assigned to a caste and sub-caste when I was born. And the way most arranged marriages worked and, for the most part, still work in India is that elders from the bride’s and the groom’s side look for potential matches within the same caste but not within the same sub-caste. Once the elders find a potential match from a good family, someone with similar socio-economic background, among other things, they move to the next step of matching the horoscopes. When all of these criteria are up to satisfaction, the bride and the groom are declared to be a good match. Most times, even before the bride and groom have even gotten to talk to each other. To my knowledge, this way of match-making has been in place for at least the last three generations.

My grandparents and my great-grandparents lived in or used to live in small villages, mostly comprised of people from the same caste. They did not have the means or ways to go outside their small village. They lived in small, mostly self-sufficient villages. Given this context, I could see how arranging a marriage with someone in the same caste made sense. The bride and groom potentially grew up together, and they probably have gotten a chance to learn about each other and their families. Since everyone in the same caste lived in the same village or nearby villages and did not have the means to travel to villages many leagues away, finding a match in the same village or nearby village made sense. The cultures and practices of the people in the same village are likely to have been similar for the most part. Following the marriage, the bride and groom will have the support of their family, who live in the same village. It makes sense.

When moving between villages and even to nearby cities became easier, my grandfather’s generation started to move out of the villages in search of better economic opportunities. Sometimes they moved in groups, and sometimes they moved alone. They ended up settling in a new city and started raising a family. And when it came for my dad to get married, even though all of my grandfather’s people, people from his caste, were not in the same place, he might have wanted to have some sense of continuity, some sort of comfort in still looking for a bride in his own caste. Although his people did not all live in the same village, they still had similar ways of life since they had just moved to a new city. So, it made sense to find a bride from the same caste. In the meantime, people from that one little village or a group of villages kept spreading apart and moved to different cities, different states, different countries even different continents. The Diaspora spread, and slowly but surely, everyone’s ways of living started to change, and the people started to grow apart physically.

Now, the people of my generation as of the age to get married. Lo and behold, arranged marriages are still the predominant way the people in my generation are getting married. But the reasons our forefathers used arranged marriage to find a match have long fallen apart. We forgot to ask, “Why do we do things the way we do?” It seems to me that caste-based marriages are more about honor and what the “other people” or the “Jones” will think about one’s family than it is about the bride, the groom, and their families. And this is sad. We should all ask, “Why do we do things the way we do?” Sometimes asking this question will be easier, and most other times, it will be much harder. But some questions are harder than others because those questions have not been asked in a very long time, and that should be all the more reason for us to ask the hard question.

So what are you going to question today?